EC pledges more aid

The European Commission (EC) has hit back at critics over its food aid commitments to Ethiopia by pledging an additional €15 million. In a statement released in Addis Ababa on Monday, the EC stated that its pledges amounted to some 450,000 mt of food aid this year. The commission also said that relief assistance to the impoverished country from the European Union was now at record levels. The EU had come under fire over its food aid levels to Ethiopia, currently reeling from a severe drought that has left 12.6 million people in need of assistance. “Special attention was given so that the food aid deliveries neither come too early nor too late," the EC statement said. “In order not to stretch the storing and redistribution capacity of Ethiopia, the timing of food aid delivery was planned to avoid overlapping with aid coming from elsewhere." “Careful planning and flexible management, like drawing from the emergency reserve, avoided that risk," it added. “If the assistance were coming too late, then the relief effort would have been interrupted with obvious disastrous effects. That was also avoided, with the food aid pipeline never interrupted.”